Billy
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The Repair Is Supposed to Show: Visible Mending, Sashiko and Boro
Visible mending can keep damaged clothes wearable without pretending the damage never happened. I repair a torn pair of jeans, look at sashiko and boro properly, and consider why a repair does not need to disappear.
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I Want a Black Jacket. The Rest of My Wardrobe Has Opinions.
I want another black jacket, but not another generic staple. Three awkward garments already in my wardrobe tell me what the replacement needs to do.
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How to Measure Clothes for Buying and Selling Online
A practical guide to measuring clothes laid flat for online buying and selling, from pit-to-pit and sleeve length to rise, inseam, waist and overall length.
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Build the Mood: Halloween Dressing from Real Clothes
A vampire, witch, mourning silhouette or gothic butler becomes much easier to dress once you stop searching for the whole character. Here’s how to find the tailoring, shirts, dresses, textures, accessories, shoes and makeup carrying the mood.
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I Remembered the Ice Dragon, but Not the Book
I went looking for a bedtime audiobook and accidentally rebuilt my childhood fantasy shelf from fragments. Some memories were remarkably accurate. Others had quietly rewritten the books.
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I’d Been Buying Bedding Backwards
I’d always bought bedding by pattern, size and price. Then I learned what cotton, percale, sateen, bamboo-derived fibres and thread count actually mean.
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A Bestiary for People Bored of Dragons
Fantasy has plenty of monsters. What it often loses is everything that made them strange in the first place: jobs, cures, local customs, particular hills and one very suspicious wolf-man.
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Someone Cut the Label Out: Washing a Wool Jumper Without Guessing
A missing care label removes the certainty from washing wool. Here’s how to work from the lowest-risk option upwards, when cautious hand washing is reasonable and when to leave the jumper alone.
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I Like Old Things. I Don’t Like Things Pretending to Be Old.
I like objects that show their age. I am much less interested when the age has been applied with sandpaper, dark glaze and decorative worm holes. On patina, distressed furniture and the difference between evidence and imitation.
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The Search Box Is Not an Oracle
Aesthetic labels and garment names both fail in different ways. Here’s how to work out what carries the character, adjust a second-hand search and recognise it on the rail.